Reviewer: iHategiants666 Signed
Date: October 11 2015
Title: Chapter 1: PROLOGUE
K, don't get me wrong, I like what you're doing with the story, but I wonder if you miiight be overdoing it. You said the story would be shorter the previous one, yet at the rate you're going it seems like it will be at least another six chapters before we reach the climax!
I feel that making each chapter about just one person is only so good for extending the story's length if there are more developments. But so far, nothing Kelly has done, surprises me. It seemed inevitable that she would begin murdering innocents for no reason, as she no longer sees them as humans, rather as insects.
(HINT: WOULDN'T IT BE NICE IF SOMEONE TRIED TO SPEAK OUT TO HER!)
She still tries to justify that she's better than Casey would be at this size, but now that's irrelevant. If anything, she's becoming more like Casey, if not worse. When is she finally going to drop the illusion of being a goddess and realize she's just a monster?
Casey, on the other hand, hasn't changed a bit. Obviously, she's out for revenge for all who've wronged her in Henford, but that doesn't need details. One could easily just cut to the chase: leaving the town in ruins clutching the new sheriff in her hands.
The character that I figured you would enjoy the most is Lisa. It's not common to create a benelovent giantess in this forum, that can also think rationally. She's the only one who realizes that all they can do is stomp the smaller people. Not much of a life, right. It's like having intercourse: you get wild for maybe a couple hours, but then the adrenaline fades and the fun is over. Of course, Kelly and Casey are determined to make it last.
Another thing I wanted to bring up was the Side Effects: I always figured from the start that they had ingested a super-strength formula and the side-effect was their growth. IF... and it is an IF, if that is the case, then it is perfectly plausible for men to take it and develop super-strength. I mean you had it stated that the formula works only on women (DID YOU EXPLAIN WHY, SCIENTIFICALLY) but it did NOTHING on men, that's rather. There should be SOME sort of result, unless you're just using the fantasy part of thsi story to rationalize things in which case, forget this paragraph, altogether.
And FYI, if you're going to give the Army, a stupid and completely ineffective operation, don't give a cool name. I liked the idea of Operation Goliath, until I realized the scope of its tactics. Made no sense, because Goliath is male, so you should have used the name Gaia, or Rhea (Greek Titanesses). This is not to complain about Volume 2, but rather for future reference, because I can only assume the President will be launching another direct assault on the girls (maybe all three).
The biggest problem I have is that your fantasy is WAAAYYY too one-sided. You give all the girls massive size AND super-powers to go with them (Diamond hard skin). For the military, you keep things as they would be in this modern day and age, completely forgetting that USA doesn't work like that. You think it's a good excuse that they "didn't think things through" when they were making the FORMULA, but the reality is that Americans would ALWAYS prepare for the worst possible scenario, and have a fail safe. Is it too much to ask that Area 51 has some special super-weapons that might actually be able to HARM the giantesses? If not Kelly, then at least Casey or Lisa. I'm not saying it has to KILL them, but it should have SOME effect, just to put Lisa and Casy on edge, maybe make Kelly want to grow more.
(Have you considered a tac. squad entering Kelly, via her ear and killing her from within? Just a thought...)
Finally, I know you said it would be a while before Ron and the Doc would appear but this getting tedious. You could AT least show Ron listening to the radio, gasping at the death toll, while Mendel is progressing with research for an antidote... ONE PARARGRAPH IS ALL I ASK...
That's all I got for now. I MIGHT be doing a story of my own in November about MILES MORALES: THE ULTIMATE SPIDERMAN and his fight VS CASSIE LANG.
I still like you story and you can ignore my suggestions if you want, but I should think I am making SOME sense!!
Cheers!
Author's Response:
Well, I think I covered a few of the topics in the previous response. To start by the end: You are making sense. I think I know where some of the discrepancies are coming from. I'd say that there are two:
- My set-up and rules for the fantasy world of Side Effects are different from the ones you would have chosen. I covered something in my previous answer, but I will try to answer to the other points you raised in the remainder of this one
- The pace of the story. This first chapters of Side Effects Volume 3 are quite slow. They are quite descriptive, but not so much time has passed. They would be almost the introduction of the story, since none of the three women have actually started to pursue their agenda in full. I invested time in explaining Kelly's fall into her delusional state, in giving Lisa a purpose (to stop Kelly) and on setting Casey on her new objective (which is to find the leftover formula from Volume 1 and grow). The next chapter (with Casey) will be kind of the transition between the introduction and the real action that will bring the characters to their objectives. And the conclusion will still need to wait quite alot. I know that you are eager to see what's going on, how the people are going to be able to fight the women and whether they will succeed. But that will not happen until the climax, necessarily. Many of your questions will be answered during the story: people will get smarter when fighting them, Ron and Mendel will progress in their investigation, the women will face opposition... but when that happens things are going to move relatively quick. I wanted Side Effects to be detailed in how some things were covered and this is pushing the part of the story you are eager to read away, which I think is making you judge some long introduction chapters as if they were conclusion. I'm afraid that this is going to be like this for a while... so I'm afraid that the only thing I can do is to ask you for patience...
BTW, Volume 3 won't be shorter than Volume 2. It's 20 chapters long (which is 3 chapters less), but each chapter is quite longer. Overall, Vol. 3 is 115K words long versus the 87K words of Vol. 2...
The reason I'm focusing on a character per chapter (mostly) is to make it easier to follow the story and to be able to get detailed. Actually, when I did a "cross-roads" chapter (like ch. 5), I received feedback that it was confusing...
Now, let me go to your specific comments:
- I think Kelly will surprise you. As I said, these initial chapters were a long introduction that intended to show her evolution (or her fall). I know that her actions might not be surprising if you were already expecting her to go on a rampage (which you did), but to me the focus was to describe how she tried to rationalize it in her head, and I think that at least this was somewhat original...
- Kelly will never realize that she has become a monster. That's the way her head is working (and what I'm trying to describe in her chapters...)
- I will invest time in describing Casey's actions. I know that you will probably enjoy them less than some other readers, but she is getting back to her hometown with the objective to grow but where she also has some loose ends... in the end, not every chapter in a story needs to move at a quick pace towards the conclusion. Sometimes, the progress is slower and the chapter is more descriptive. These chapters are needed to provide some depth to the characters or the situation that a more rushed chapter would not have. There will be a few of those... I think that the problem with them, from your perspective, is that you need to wait a full week to read the next. If you had the complete story in your hands they would probably be less of an issue.
- Kelly is not treating her size as an extended "intercourse". While she enjoys what she does enormously, she really has a long term agenda in mind. Casey, on the other side, is more than willing to "fuck" the world for as long as she can. Of course, it doesn't look like her plan is sustainable, but she never cared about those things.
- About the growth: I explained some (and I'll try to explain some more). It will not hold a detailed scientific analysis, of course (otherwise, we would have real growth formulas), but the summary would be: the formula that causes the growth makes a change on both chromosome X that is required for this growth. Humans without 2 X chromosomes cannot be affected by the formula. So, males see no effect. About the strength: it's a consequence of the square-cube law. Any animal growing too much would not be able to hold its own weight because the weight increases with the cube of the growth factor while the strength only increases with the square (since it depends on the muscle section). So, for a human being to become giant, something needs to make this human grow but this same something needs to increase his strength further. Once you accept this, it's up to the author (in this case me :) to decide whether to make the strength increase just enough to keep the new weight or bring it quite further, like in this case.
- America's plan to deal with the formula was to create it and control it in the first place. They would have never put it to work if they had not had a way to reduce or keep the subject under control. The problem is that the girls grew when no one expected them to retain the ability to do so, which kind of caught the government unaware. Having said that, they had a plan, which consisted on using a fast reaction force to attack the girls with conventional weapons. Since all they knew was that they could get 100 feet tall and they knew nothing about their increased strength (it's not as if they could study them while they were big), they were convinced that anti-tank weaponry would be more than enough (if it can sink an aircraft carrier and destroy an armored vehicle, why should a missile not kill a hundred foot woman?). Of course, they were wrong. I know that you don't like the conflicts so far to have been so one-sided, but if the army had had an effective way to kill them right after their growth, the story would have finished several months ago...
- Some people suggested the team getting into Kelly's ear before. I never consider it for this story. Who knows, I may leverage the idea for future works (although I'm not sure I will write abouta woman as massive as Kelly in the near future; I tend to prefer smaller giantesses)
- I'm afraid Ron and Mendel won't show up in the coming couple or three chapters. When they show up they will get protagonism quickly enough. But I can assure you that they are moving and working as fast as they can!
Cheers!
P.S. I'll be interested on the story you are writing. Any teasers on what the storyline would be?
